


Faces Through the Veil of Smoke

by InsaneTrollLogic



Series: Faces [1]
Category: How I Met Your Mother
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 13:19:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1348852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneTrollLogic/pseuds/InsaneTrollLogic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a ghost story. Except for all the ways it’s not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to LJ. Completed 5/8/2009

When she meets Ted he’s wearing a suit. A sharp black number with a red tie. She’s sitting at the end of this bar called McLaren's waiting for a friend and suddenly there’s a warm hand on her shoulder and a light friendly voice from another man in another suit saying, “Hey, have you met Ted?”  
  
She likes Ted. Ted seems like a good person. The kind of guy every girl should want to settle down with but there’s something under it all, something sadder. Still, at the end of the night when she’s buzzed on scotch, she leans over and kisses him getting excited at the prospect of a good hookup.  
  
But Ted pulled away before hand, squeezed his eyes shut and said, “Look, Robin. I like you. A lot. But I got left at the alter about a month ago and I really don’t think I’m ready.” He laughs. “I mean I only just shaved my break-up beard.”  
  
“You used to have a beard?” Robin echoes, completely missing the point. “Hot.”  
  
Ted laughs. “I’ll keep that in mind.”  
  
“So this is really not happening? I mean you suited up and everything.”  
  
His face goes weirdly blank at that, the underlying sadness making its way to his eyes. “I had a really good time tonight,” he says. “I’m not ready for a relationship right now but you should come out with us sometime. You can always use some new friends.”  
  
She’s not quite sure what possesses her to say yes.  
  


***

  
  
Later that same night after Ted and his friend had left, a soft voice whispers into her ear, “A hundred bucks says when you turn around I say wow.”  
  
She turns around.  
  
No one is there.  
  


***

  
  
She goes back to the bar three days later and it’s absolute madness because it’s a Tuesday night and no one goes to a bar on Tuesday nights. In fact, Robin’s typical Tuesday consist of a night on her couch with her dogs and a glass of scotch. She likes those nights. She needs those nights after a life full of relationships gone bad and jobs gone worse. But here she is looking at the slim pickings of McLaren’s until her eyes catch sight of a vaguely familiar mess of dark hair.  
  
Ted Mosby. Just-got-dumped-at-the-alter Ted Mosby who turned her invitation down last night only to counter with another offer of his own. She smiles to herself, takes her drink and slides into the booth across from him. “What’s shaking Ted?”  
  
Ted lights up. “Robin! I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. I’m sorry about the other night.”  
  
She waves a hand. “Totally forgotten. I just got work and well, I figured, like you said, I could use some friends.”  
  
“Well I’m glad you came,” Ted says. He looks different tonight. He’s wearing a green patterned overshirt with a black t-shirt underneath. The difference this outfit and last Saturday’s is absurd. Most guys she knows only come to a bar in a suit right after work, but Ted and his friend, they donned the suits on Saturday.   
  
The man on her left coughs into his hands and Robin turns to look at him. She has a vague sort of memory of a voice drawling, Haaaaave you met Ted? but she doesn’t have a name to place with it.   
  
“Oh my God,” Ted says. “I’m so sorry. That was really rude. Robin,” He gestures to the man next to her. “This is my best friend, Marshall Eriksen.”  
  
“Pleasure to meet you,” Marshall says, waggling an eyebrow as he reaches over to take her hand.  
  
She giggles despite herself because the act is so over the top cheesy it’s enduring and she likes these two already. It’s been too long since she had people she could just hang out with. “Good to meet you too, Marshall Eriksen.”  
  
“So,” Marshall says, “Ted tells me you’re a news anchor. Exciting stuff. Anywhere I might have heard of.”  
  
Robin hates this question and she answers, cringing. “Metro News One and you might want to hold back on calling it exciting. I’m not even sure you can really call it news.”  
  
Marshall shakes his head. “The whole place went downhill after Sandy Rivers stopped reading us the morning paper.”  
  
She feels a blush creep up her face because she knows all too well the allure of Sandy Rivers. The mix of fascination and repulsion. The camping trip had been quite an... experience.  
  
“Please tell me you aren’t Sandy Rivers fanboys because I can leave right now.”  
  
“Guy was a douche,” Ted says.  
  
“Total douche,” Marshall confirms. “Sounds like we got a step up in anchors though. Me and Ted should never have stopped watching.”  
  
“No,” Robin concedes. “You made the right decision. My job’s a joke and I really, really don’t want to talk about work right now,” Robin says. “How about you guys? What’s with the street clothes. With the suits last time, I thought you two were some of those high class businessmen gracing us commoners with their awesome presence.”  
  
There’s a long silence and Robin knows she’s said something wrong but scrolling back through her words she can’t find it, doesn’t even know if she wants to find it. “No businessmen here,” Ted says finally. “I’m an architect, Marshall’s an environmental lawyer.” He blinks twice. “Saturday was--an anniversary of sorts. Don’t worry about it.”  
  
“Today’s definitely a sweats day,” Marshall says.   
  
“Yeah”, Ted says. “You’re lucky this guy’s even wearing pants.”  
  
“What happened?”  
  
“My ex just moved back to New York,” Marshall replies after a pause. “She called Ted earlier tonight looking to test the waters. I’ve only seen her once since she broke our engagement.”  
  
“I told her she could just leave him alone,” Ted says peevishly.  
  
“Wow.” Robin takes a deep breath and then a sip of scotch. “Did I run across the lonely hearts club or what? Left at the alter? Broken engagement? What are the odds?”  
  
For a second she thinks she’s blown it, thinks she’s gotten too personal too fast but a second later the weird quiet is gone and Marshall’s grinning over at her. “So you’re telling me you don’t have some sort of romantic tragedy? I’m not sure we can be friends with you.”  
  
Which is how after three more drinks and two more hours, she finds herself telling them the story of her break up with Simon ten years ago and then, the same exact break up just last month. Ted makes the appropriate sympathetic noises and Marshall nods at all the right places but she keeps thinking she hears someone trying to stifle laughter.   
  
At the end of the night Marshall claps a large hand on her shoulder and says, “Thanks for hanging with us tonight. Our group’s been feeling a little small lately.”  
  
“Plus actually hanging out with a girl gives us some street cred,” Ted adds.  
  
Robin raises an eyebrow.  
  
Ted laughs. “Well not street cred exactly, more like, can actually talk to a woman without sounding like an ass cred. Which is just as valuable if not more so.”  
  
“Yeah, Scherbatsky,” Marshall says. “Anytime you’re up to hang come find us. We’re here pretty much every night. And if we’re not well, we live upstairs.”  
  
“Don’t be a stranger,” Ted says.   
  


***

  
It starts to be a habit. It’s been a while since Robin has had good friends and Marshall and Ted turn out to be just what she needs. The three of them are a good team, if slightly broken. She likes to think they’ll fix each other in the end.  
  
She heads to the bar early one Friday, intent on getting a buzz on and maybe a girl to introduce to Marshall. She finds something completely different.  
  
He’s leaning against the wall near the end of the bar just watching the scene with only a vague interest. Robin doesn’t know why he stands out from the rest of them. Something about the attitude or maybe the suit or even the slight smirk playing on his lips. He meets her eyes and everything changes.  
  
Then someone bumps into her from behind and she turns around to find a tiny brown haired lady stammering out an apology and by the time she turned back around the guy was completely gone. She turns back to the girl. “Hey this is going to sound crazy but there was this guy at the end of the bar. Blonde hair, blue eyes?”  
  
She goes quiet for a minute and then asks, “Was he wearing a suit?”  
  
“Yeah?” Robin says. “Yeah, how did you know?”  
  
Her new friend’s head snaps around, searching every direction in excitement that seems slightly tinged with panic but she finds nothing and her face settles into a frown. “Sorry, it’s just that sounds like someone I used to know.”  
  
“Used to know?” Robin echoes.  
  
She pulls her purse up on her shoulder, and says, “Yeah. I just moved back into the city. This place used to kind of be my haunt back in the day.” She laughs again but sounds brittle, like glass shattering in the distance. “I forgot how much I missed it.”  
  
They end up talking for the next hour or so, using girl’s night as an excuse while they both casually fend of the bar’s usual players. When she finally catches sight of Ted and Marshall she waves them over. “You’ve got to meet my friend, Marshall. He’s one of the sweetest guys I know, you’re going to love—“  
  
Then she stops talking because she can see the sudden tension in Marshall’s face, sees the widening of Ted’s eyes and glances back to the girl she’s been chatting with for the last hour to find a pale face and a mouth gaping wide open and Robin realizes she’d never gotten a name.   
  
“Lily,” Marshall says.  
  
 _Oh,_  Robin thinks as her stomach twists in on itself.


	2. Chapter 2

There is history here. Pain and betrayal. All the reasons Robin doesn’t do commitment and all the reasons she secretly wants to. Ted is hovering just behind Marshall glaring daggers into Lily’s forehead and Robin thinks she should move, should align herself with her friends.  
  
But she sees the pain etched raw on Lily’s faces as well, the two of them mirroring one another.  _They’re perfect for each other_. The thought tears across her mind with surprising clarity and she knows no two people could rip each other to shreds like that if they weren’t made for each other. For a second this picture flashes across her mind of the five of them sitting at a booth in MacLaren’s laughing and the picture is so real, so utterly tangible that it takes her a minute to backtrack and think, five of us?  _Five of us?_  
  
“How have you been?” Lily asks.   
  
There’s a tentative tinge of hope in her face, in her eyes and Robin has to look away because it hurts to watch, hurts to hear. She watches Ted instead, glaring at Lily, his eyes alight with anger. She understands anger. The look on Marshall’s face is harder to define. He still hasn’t said a word. Hasn’t so much as moved.  
  
“So,” Lily stammers, “I’m uh, back in town. For good. I just—I mean, I wanted to you know, clear the air because it’s New York now and not San Francisco.”  
  
“It’s a big city,” Ted snaps. “You know, a few million people. There’s no reason you’re going to have to see each other.”  
  
“Yeah,” Lily says, face falling. “No, right, I just—“ She gestured vaguely to the door. “You know I should go. I have places. People.” She offered the shyest smile Robin has ever seen. “Good to see you again, Marshall.”  
  
Marshall moves his mouth but doesn’t say a word and Lily gathers her things and leaves with slumped shoulders.  
  
“Wow,” Robin says as the door closes behind her. “Marshall, I’m so sorry, I had no idea.”  
  
“Beer,” Marshall says.  
  
“If I had known, Marshall, I never would have—”  
  
“Beer!” Marshall repeats, louder.   
  
Ted snaps out of his daze, steering Marshall into their usual booth as he signals for Wendy with one hand. “Hey, can we get a round?”  
  


***

  
  
Three hours later, Marshall is as drunk as Robin has ever seen him--which is impressive considering just how much alcohol it takes to get Marshall drunk. No matter how much he might protest and say he is the runt of the litter, Marshall is a big dude and even pushed over the edge he isn't half as far gone as Ted at his worst. Drunk Marshall is just sort of sad.  
  
“Can you believe her?” Ted says, taking a drink. “Coming in here after all this time. Messing with you after she’d already crushed you. What a bitch.”  
  
“Yeah, I know, right?” Marshall echoes, slamming a hand down on the table. “Total bitch.”  
  
Robin shifts in her seat. She hasn’t heard this story. Not all of it. All she knows are bits and pieces and when she thinks of the nervous girl with the sweet smile who’d chatted with her for an hour about kindergartners and painting, she can’t imagine someone who’d leave her fiancé two months before a wedding after a relationship that had lasted a decade.  
  
But she wasn’t there so she doesn’t say anything. She just watches the two of them tear the girl to shreds.  
  
Later as she and Ted collaborate to haul Marshall up to the apartment and into bed. “You don’t think the two of you were being a little harsh on her?” Robin says. “I mean if they went out for ten years, she can’t be a complete monster.”  
  
“She was my friend too,” Ted says. “And she left me to pick up the pieces. It nearly killed him. The only thing that got him going was anger so I fed it.” His eyes are dark. “There’s no way I’m losing him again.”   
  


***

  
  
Ted has to work late the next night so Robin winds up sitting across from Marshall staring at her hands. “I was pretty messed up last night,” he tells her. “I’m sorry if it was weird for you.”  
  
“You were going through a hard time,” Robin says. “I can’t imagine how it must feel.”  
  
“I still love her,” Marshall says quietly. “I don’t think I know how to stop.”  
  
“Oh,” Robin says. She doesn’t know that feeling. Doesn’t know if she wants it if this is the cost. She hesitates. “You’re not going to try to get back together with her, are you?”  
  
“No,” Marshall says. “But it’s awkward because the last time we saw each other we kind of, had a relapse.”  
  
Robin squeezes her eyes shut. “So you banged her?”  
  
She enjoys watching Marshall sputter like this. It’s been a talent of hers for a long time. Cutting through bullshit, saying the things that make men blush. She smirks and takes a quiet victory sip of her scotch.  
  
“It was right after The Accident,” Marshall says.   
  
She has heard of The Accident, the life changing car accident that changed Ted’s life but they didn’t like to talk about the details. She almost asks right there. Asks what happened, how long Ted was laid up, but Marshall looks so miserable she can’t do anything but grab him by his shoulders and haul him to his feet. “That’s it, we need to find you a girl.”  
  
“I don’t want a girl,” Marshall whines.   
  
“Well too bad,” Robin says pulling him to his feet and shoving him toward a group of girls congregated at the bar. “Hey,” she calls, steering him into the masses. “Have you met Marshall?”  
  


***

  
  
She’s watches Marshall work from a distance. He goes for the red head in the end and Robin’s a little surprised because after Lily she had pegged the brunette as more his type.   
  
She’s so caught up in Marshall’s production that she doesn’t notice the man sliding into the booth across from her until he coughs and makes his presence known. She nearly knocks her drink over when she looks up because it’s the guy. The one she’s been seeing out of the corner of her eyes since a voice that hadn’t quite sounded like Marshall drawled  _Haaaave you met Ted?_  
  
Over at the bar, Marshall has his hand on the small of the red head’s back. Robin smiles and looks back down to her scotch. When she raises her eyes, she expects the well dressed blonde to be gone because that was his MO wasn’t it? He gave her looks that sent chills down her back and then he disappeared.  
  
This time he isn’t gone.   
  
“Lily’s a good person,” he says, adjusting his tie. “She’s a good person who made a mistake.”  
  
At the bar, Marshall’s made his move past the blue line headed for center ice. The girl is leaning into the kiss. Robin looks away but not to the man in front of her. Making eye contact would be an acknowledgement, a surrender of some sort. She should not have a guilty conscious and said guilty conscious should not be wearing a suit. There’s a tall brunette at the end of the bar who keeps glancing in her direction and Robin’s thinking maybe she should be friendly and introduce herself.  
  
“I know you can see me,” the man across from her says.   
  
Robin looks up sharply. She notices three things immediately. The first is the smirk playing at the edges of his lips. The second is the eyes—clear and intense and so utterly mesmerizing that she is incapable of looking away. The third and by far the most distressing is that she appears to be the only person in the bar who actually does see him.  
  
“I know you can see me and this whole stranger through a crowded room thing we’ve been doing is totally, totally lame.”  
  
“And here I was thinking you were a romantic.” She replies before she can stop herself.  
  
That’s all it takes. She’s broken her rule, recognized the presence of this thing and a sneaking suspicion crawling up her spine to tell her she’s stuck with it.  
  
“Please,” he says, raising a hand as if to brush away her point, “the things I’ve done to women would shock and appall you.”  
  
“Don’t sound quite so proud of yourself, stud,” Robin retorts, disguising her words with a sip of her drink.   
  
“My complete and utter awesomeness is not the point of this conversation,” he says, sitting up a little straighter in his seat. His suit is black. His tie is black. His skin is pale. “The point is my best friend doesn’t hear a word I say and you—some random newscaster from  _Canada_ —appear to have tuned into my frequency.”  
  
“Canada?”  
  
“I know, right? All the New Yorkers in this bar and I end up with the Canadian. It’s not even a real country.”  
  
Robin feels like she should be offended, but she isn’t, she’s snickering into her drink and it’s the lightest she’s felt in ages, like the all encompassing weight of her failing job and her failing love life has dissipated for just a moment.   
  
“What’s so funny?” Marshall asks, sliding into the booth and when she looks up, it’s her friend where the man had been just seconds before.   
  
Robin doesn’t bother looking for him. She knows she won’t find him again. Not tonight at least. “Nothing,” she says, “It’s nothing. What happened with the redhead?”  
  
“Oh, she’s great. Really, really great. She’s a nurse. I got her number. We’re going out for coffee tomorrow.” He quiets. “Thanks for tonight, Robin. I really needed this.”  
  
Robin raises her drink. “That’s what I’m here for, bro.”  
  
And she pretends everything is normal even though it’s not.


	3. Chapter 3

She avoids MacLaren's for precisely thirteen days. She goes to a different bar with some friends from work, downs shots and rides the mechanical bull. She wakes up the next morning with a horrible hangover to find a of an old Robin Sparkles video playing on her television. She frowns at it but leaves it on as she moves into her kitchen and pours herself a bowl of cereal. She has four missed calls on her phone. Two are from Ted. One is Marshall. One is a number she doesn’t recognize. Only one of them had left a message.  
  
 _Robin, it’s Ted. I haven’t talked to you in like two weeks. Wanted to see what was up._  
  
Onscreen Robin Sparkles leans back in the sand and sings about the greatest week and a half of her life.   
  
 _Look I get that you’re busy but things aren’t the same without you. If you feel like a night out, you know where to find us._  
  
She closes her eyes and promises herself that when she opens them, everything will be different.  
  


***

  
  
She doesn’t call Ted back. She goes to work and says booger rather than burger during a live broadcast but it doesn’t matter because no one notices. For the thousandth time she contemplates quitting right there on the spot but knows she’s under qualified for anything job. She’s a joke but at least she’s employed.  
  
Outside the station, she’s met with a slightly wild-eyed Lily Aldrin.   
  
“Hello?” she says.   
  
“Hi, Robin,” Lily says. “Look. I know you probably don’t think I deserve the time of day but I really need to talk to you.”  
  
Robin looks around. She’s expecting to find Ted or Marshall or the well dressed blonde watching but they’re alone in the sea of anonymous faces. “Fine,” Robin says curtly. “I’ll hear you out.”  
  


***

  
  
“Breaking up with Marshall was the biggest mistake I ever made.” Lily says. Her fingers are shaking over the coffee cup. Robin wishes she would have suggested something with alcohol instead of caffeine. “But by the time I realized it, I was too far gone to come back. I never meant to hurt him.”  
  
“Well,” Robin says. “You really did. I only met Marshall two months ago and even I could see it.”  
  
“I know,” Lily says. Her eyes are red and if she starts crying, Robin is out of there. She can barely handle her own emotions without adding someone else’s to the mix.   
  
“I’m sorry, but why are you talking to me about this? You don’t know me at all.”  
  
Lily cups both hands around her coffee cup and takes a long sip. “I didn’t know how hard it was going to be coming back. I really made a mess of things when I called off this wedding. It’s like we got a divorce and Marshall won all the friends.”  
  
“Won all the friends?” Robin repeats. “You do realize you practically dumped him on the alter, right? Who did you think people would side with?”  
  
Lily sniffs but the tears don’t come. Robin finds herself pressing back into the booth, trying to distance herself. “It’s just,” Lily hiccups. “I miss him you know. And I miss Ted and I miss Barney and I miss how it all used to be.”  
  
“Please don’t cry,” Robin pleads. “Please don’t. If there’s snot I’m going to leave.”  
  
“Do you think there’s any chance he’ll even talk to me again? Not get back together. Just you know talk?”  
  
Robin thinks of Lily here in front of her and a quietly drunk Marshall saying,  _I still love her. I don’t think I know how to stop_. She sighs. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, you might have an outside chance at it.” She takes a sip of her drink and adds, “Go through Ted.”  
  
“Ted? Ted hates me right now.”  
  
Robin shrugs. “I didn’t say it would be easy.”  
  


***

  
  
They wind up in walking toward a shoes store a few blocks down. Lily keeps saying something about sale but Robin’s eyes are fixated on the place across the street. “I had no idea laser tag still existed.” The sun is dipping under the skyscrapers and the shoe place will be closed within minutes of their entrance. “Forget shoes,” she says. “How about we go play a round.”  
  
Lily looks at her strangely and finds an excuse to leave two minutes later.  
  
Robin plays a game of laser tag and heads to MacLaren’s.  
  


***

  
  
Marshall hugs her when she walks into the bar. Ted kisses her on the cheek and it’s weird because she’s never had this sort of thing before. Never been part of a group who would miss her when she was gone. It fills her with a rush of warmth and she hates herself for waiting so long to come back.  
  
“What happened to you?” Marshall says. “Ted was starting to think you didn’t like us anymore.”  
  
She smirks. “Ted thought that, huh?  
  
“Yeah,” Marshall says. “I thought it might have been that Ted smelled funny but...”  
  
Robin laughs, looks pointedly at Ted and slides into the booth next to Marshall. Ted clutches at his hear. “Oh, that hurts Scherbatsky. That hurts.”  
  
“Got to man up, Theodore,” Robin replies, signaling Wendy the waitress for a beer. “So let’s hear it, Marshall. How was the date with the redhead? Catch me up.”  
  
“Katy’s great,” Marshall says. “I mean she’s funny and smart and great and—”  
  
“Marshall went on one date with her,” Ted cuts in. “He had a great time but he never called her again.”  
  
“You can’t rush these things,” Marshall says defensively.  
  
“It’s a three day thing, dude,” Ted says. “Not a three week thing.”  
  
“Coward,” someone adds through a cough.  
  
Robin looks away from Marshall to find the blond sitting across from her, just right of Ted. He’s impeccably dressed as always, today wearing a gray suit and a gray tie. He looks like he belongs here. Looks like he’s always been here. “What?” he says off Robin’s look. “Lily’s back in town and while he says he’s air quote ‘over her’ I give them three weeks before he’s back on top of her if you get what I’m saying.”  
  
He raises his hand, looking for a high five and Robin just stares at him because acknowledging him was one thing but giving a high five to a—she refused to even think the word—that was crazy. He looks ever so slightly crestfallen but winks and says, “We’ll high five later.”  
  
“I’m going to call her,” Marshall protests from her side. “You just can’t rush into things like this.”  
  
“I’m telling you, man,” Ted takes a sip of his drink. “She’s going to think you don’t like her. She’ll be going out with someone else by the time you get off your ass and call her.”  
  
“I’m going to call her,” Marshall repeats.  
  
“You should have nailed her while you had the chance,” the blonde says from Ted’s side. “A few more weeks and you’re back to monogamy with little to know chance of getting anything exotic.”  
  
Robin chokes on her drink and stifles her laughter and Ted segways into a long convoluted story about his architecture firm and Robin’s only half listening until the blonde across from her smirks and says, “Raising, those pillars. Moseby, what up?”  
  
Robin grins because it’s completely ridiculous but it was said with such enthusiasm it’s impossible not to acknowledge it.   
  
Then she realizes something has gone wrong.   
  
Ted and Marshall have stopped talking, staring at her with open mouths. Robin slowly looks up to find her own hand suspended in the air, waiting expectantly for something and oh,  _oh shit_. She’d said that. She’d said  _that_. She looks away from Ted, seeking the sight of her phantom presence but even he has abandoned her. She pulls her hand down deliberately, feeling suddenly skittish. She can’t be here right now. Regardless of how much she likes being here, she needs to get away  _rightthehellnow._ “I’m sorry,” she sputters. “But I have to go. I have a uh, a meeting. That’s right a meeting.”  
  
“It’s one in the morning,” Ted croaks finally. “It’s nothing, Robin it’s fine.” He raises his hand and gives her the high five but it’s not fine. It’s all skewed.  
  
“I need to go,” Robin says, groping blindly for her purse. “I need.” She scrambles out of the booth and makes a beeline for the bathroom because she’s ten seconds away from tears and she knows this is one place they won’t follow.  
  
“Shit,” she hisses to the bathroom mirror. Her eyes are red but she shouldn’t be crying. She has nothing to be upset about. She has friends for the first time in years. Her job’s still a shit hole but it’s been a shit hole since she started. Nothing’s changed. She goes into one of the stalls, sits and grabs some toilet paper from the roll to blow her nose.  
  
“What’s wrong?” a voice says.  
  
A pair of black dress shoes appears under the stall door. She knows who it is and she wishes it were anybody else. “Go away,” she hisses at the shoes. “You’re not supposed to be here!”  
  
“Are you crying?” he asks.  
  
“This is the lady’s room,” Robin calls back. “And you’re dead!”  
  
“Dead?” he repeats sounding a little surprised. “You think I’m dead?”  
  
“The disappearing thing kind of makes dead seem likely.”  
  
“So you’re crying in a locked bathroom stall because you think I’m dead. Awesome.”  
  
“In what world is this awesome?”  
  
“Because I’ve totally still got it. Necrophilia five.”  
  
Robin wipes her tears away and high fives her side of the bathroom stall. She takes a few deep breaths and then pushes the door back open. The bathroom is empty. Of course the bathroom is empty.  
  
She ducks her head, clutches her purse and makes her way to the door.  
  
Ted and Marshall are talking quietly at the bar and she catches just the barest snatch of their conversation. “That’s weird right?” Ted hisses.  
  
“I’d almost say Barney’s perfect woman. Either that or long lost sibling. I mean---”   
  
She doesn’t hang around to hear the rest of it. Doesn’t need to. Doesn’t want to.   
  
Outside, it’s colder than she remembered. The kind of cold she remembers back in Canada in midwinter but it was almost spring now. This afternoon the temperatures had climbed into the seventies. It is T-shirt weather but she feels like she’d stepped out into six feet of snow.  
  
Her phone chirps at her. It’s Ted, texting to see if she’s all right. She feels the tears pricking at her eyes but she tells him that she’s fine. Tells she ate something weird before she came out tonight and needs to get to sleep.  
  
The lies don’t bother her at all.


	4. Chapter 4

She goes back to MacLaren’s the next night because she’s Robin Scherbatsky. She doesn’t let things like massive mental breakdowns stop her from doing what she wants to do. Ted and Marshall both leap up to greet her and the look of relief in their eyes tells her they hadn’t expected to see her again.  
  
“Hey, Robin,” Ted says, “I’m really, really sorry about last night. We didn’t mean to make things uncomfortable.”  
  
“See,” Marshall says. “We had this friend who was always saying stuff like that. Everything always high five, what up, legen—wait for it---”  
  
“Dary,” Ted finishes, laughing fondly. “Legendary. And then there were all the times he was on us to suit up!”  
  
“And play laser tag!”  
  
“Or  _have you met Ted?_ ”  
  
“Or hit a strip club.”  
  
“And you haven’t heard the liberty bell story. Oh, that one really was legendary.”  
  
It goes on like this for more than an hour. Ted and Marshall laughing and reminiscing while Robin listens and smiles. She thinks she catches sight of the blonde watching them from the bar with a far off look in his eyes.  _Barney Stinson_? she wants to ask him.  _Are you Barney Stinson?_ She doesn’t know if putting a name to him makes things better or worse.  
  
Finally Ted and Marshall lapse into silence. Ted stares at his beer. Marshall has a distant smile on his face. Robin clears her throat. “What happened to him?”  
  
Ted picks at the edge of his beer’s label. “He was hit by a bus.”  
  
Just like that the conversation’s over.  
  


***

  
  
Marshall’s ex lives in Robin’s building.   
  
She finds this out by accident as she heads out the door and toward her nearest caffeine fix. It just sort of happens and happens and happens until it’s a habit. Just like hiding her laughter as the man in the suit ( _Barney Stinson_ ) cracks a joke that only she can hear or begs her for a high five.  
  
She’s secretly started to enjoy these little encounters.  
  
And she feels really, really guilty for allowing herself to get to that place but it’s not like she was looking to befriend the woman who dumped one of her best friends two months before their wedding day. She’s definitely not going to be calling up Stella for a lunch date.   
  
This is different.  
  
Except for all the ways it’s exactly the same.  
  


***

  
  
Later it’s just her and Ted and she has this weird flashback to the night she met him, to the kissing him and laughing with him. She wonders if things would be different if they were different. Wonders if they would have kept kissing, kept going until the story ended with Mr. and Mrs. Ted Mosby, a white picket fence and 2.5 kids. She thinks about it for a moment but then dismisses it because she likes what she has now. There’s no need to change it.  
  
She suggests he hook up with the unibrowed girl at the end of the bar. Ted suggests a broad broken nosed brunette without realizing that the broken nose made him exactly Robin’s type. Neither of them act on the suggestions and Robin imagines what the rest of them must think. Maybe that she and Ted are a couple. That would explain the lack of the normal parade of men coming to hit on her.  
  
“Do you believe in ghosts?” she blurts.  
  
“No,” Ted answers, frowning. “Why? Do you?”  
  
“No!” Robin says. She sounds defensive. “It’s ridiculous. I mean when you’re dead you’re dead.”  
  
“If you’re looking for ghost stories, ask Marshall.” Ted runs a hand through his hair. He looks tired. There are dark circles around his eyes. His hair is missing his normal product, hanging limply against his forehead. He has been on edge lately. His firm is making staff cuts and he’s on the bubble.   
  
“Marshall, huh?”   
  
“Yeah,” Ted laughs dryly. “Don’t even get him started on Nessy. Why are you interested?”  
  
“I’m working on a story,” Robin lies easily. “They want me looking into a haunted bar.”  
  
“Wow,” Ted says. “I honestly can’t think of a worse person for that story.”  
  
“I think I’m going to take that as a compliment,” Robin says.   
  
She blinks and the scene shifts slightly and suddenly the blonde, wearing yet another well tailored suit--- _Barney Stinson_ —is sitting next to her, one hand thrown casually over the back of the booth, his left hand dangling just inches above her shoulder. This close, she should be able to feel the warmth of his arm, of his breath on her neck.  
  
Instead she just feels cold. “You would disrespect undead Americans, Scherbatsky,” he says. “Where is your sense of patriotism?”  
  
“I’m from Canada,” Robin hisses.  
  
“Yeah,” Ted drawls. “I know. What’s you’re point?”  
  
“My point?” Robin sputters. She can feel the blonde’s eyes on her, can imagine the upward turn of his lips, the amusement twinkling in the eyes. She doesn’t look at him. “My point is that we Canadians are logical, reasoning people who don’t need reason to be scared of the dark.”  
  
“So you’re saying you’re scared of the dark?” Ted extrapolates. He’s playing with his empty beer bottle, smirking.  
  
“No one likes the dark!”  
  
Beside her, Barney Stinson is laughing, laughing so hard that it should be echoing across the bar but the sound dies the instant it reaches her ears.  
  


***

  
  
The next day, Marshall corners her on the street and says, “You’re doing a story about ghosts and you told Ted before me? Robin, how could you?”  
  
“Sorry?”  
  
He steers her into the bar, sits her down and says seriously, “I saw a ghost, once.”  
  
She finds herself scanning the bar, looking for the now familiar face. “Really?” she asks, sounding not nearly as skeptical as she should. According to Ted, Marshall is an expert on UFOs, vampires, gremlins and teleportation.   
  
“Really?” Robin asks. “Was it someone you knew?”  _Was it Barney Stinson?_  
  
“No,” Marshall says. “It was back with I was a kid in Minnesota. I only saw her a few times but sometimes when I was looking at our house at night, I’d see this really old women sitting next to the window. But when I went inside, there was no one there.”  
  
“She never—” Robin hesitated. “She never talked to you did she?”  
  
“Scared the bejeezes out of me a few times, but no, never said a word.”  
  
“Hypothetically, do ghost usually do the creepy shadow thing or do they, you know, come out in daylight and strike up a conversation.”  
  
Marshall frowns. “What kind of ghosts have you been dealing with?”  
  
“Not me personally,” Robin says, backpedaling. “One of the people I interviewed. For the story.”  
  
Before Marshall can press, Ted’s there, pale-faced and wide eyed. “Guys,” he says. “I have news.” He sits down heavily next to Robin. “Victoria’s back in town.”  
  


***

  
  
“She’s Ted’s what if girl,” Marshall tells her later. “They tried this whole long distance thing for about a month but you know how that ends up.”  
  
“Crash and burn?”  
  
“More like fizzled and died.”  
  


***

  
  
“Oh, God,” Barney moans. “ _Brunch_. He’s going to start going to  _brunch_ again. May the world have mercy on all who seek to escape the terrible sight of Ted in coupledom.”  
  


***

  
  
“I already know,” Lily says, practically dancing as she pays for her coffee. “Who do you think accidentally bumped into her on the street and planted the idea in her head? Me that’s who!”  
  


***

  
  
Ted spends about three hours telling Robin and Marshall how he and Victoria met. A wedding, a perfect night. A drum roll but no finale. The mad rush to find her again. The slow build of a relationship. Cupcakes and awesome air kicks.  
  
“I was there,” Barney tells her, leaning conspiratorially across. “And trust me, it was even lamer than it sounded.”  
  
Robin smiles, imagining the frustration Barney must have felt sandwiched between Marshall and Lily and Ted and Victoria. Ted mistakes it as the nostalgic grin appropriate for the end of a fairy tale. “I know right?” he says. “It was so romantic.”  
  
She’s always known Ted was at least twenty percent girl. She mentally bumps her estimate up to thirty. Beside her, Marshall is smiling fondly. She doesn’t think Marshall as big a romantic as Ted. He’s just been too long without a serious girlfriend. Barney’s still got one week left before he was wrong about Lily and the three-week hook up.  
  
Ted fidgets in his seat. “How’s my hair?”  
  
“Ted, the hair’s fine,” Robin says. Thirty-five percent girl. “Doesn’t look at all like you spend an hour working on it.  
  
“You could probably asphyxiate a small child with all that product,” Barney adds. “My God, have you no penis?”  
  


***

  
  
Her first assessment of Victoria is somewhat colored by circumstance. Well really, no, that’s her second opinion. Her first impression is pretty, big smile, cute shoes. Victoria gives Marshall a hug and Ted kisses her on the cheek and Robin feels out of place. Feels like this is something she missed, a glimpse back to the time where both her friends were happy.   
  
When she wasn’t here.  
  
But Victoria smiles at her and holds out a hand and she thinks the maybe she can get used to this. And she keeps thinking that until right up Victoria sits down and that second impression hits her hard.  
  
Because Victoria sits down in the seat right next to Ted.   
  
Because Victoria sits down in  _Barney’s seat._  
  
Because Victoria sits down and Barney’s just gone.   
  
She feels her breath catch in her throat. Black spots flash across her vision. Victoria is saying something about Germany and her super important dessert scholarship but Robin can’t focus.  
  
For a time it had seemed that all of the wrongness that filled her life had sunk to the bottom, settling so completely that it seemed there was nothing but clear water. But Victoria is an irritant, an agitation, stirring the muddy water until it is almost impossible to see.  
  
She fights the urge to run, to get as far from this place as possible, to quit her job and move to Argentina to...  
  
She stays.   
  
She stays and watches and hopes for the familiar flash of blond hair that never comes back.  
  


***

  
  
The next morning over coffee with Lily she takes a deep breath, closes her eyes and says, “A few months ago, I started seeing this ghost.”


	5. Chapter 5

“Wow,” Lily says when Robin finishes. She’d been quiet through the story and Robin is thankful because she doesn’t think she would have been able to finish if she’d been interrupted. “Wow, Robin. That’s... intense.”  
  
“You don’t have to tell me,” Robin says, putting her head down on the table.  
  
“So, uh, you know this sounds totally insane, right?”  
  
“Yeah, I should seek help,” Robin replies. “That’s what you’d do, right? Maybe I should go back home, get everything together.”  
  
“To Canada?” Lily’s eyes go wide. “You can’t go back there. Once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker.”  
  
“Then what do I do? I feel like there’s got to be some reason for this. Some reason why it’s me instead of someone else.”  
  
“You want my advice?” Lily asks, excitedly. She draws herself up in the booth and uses both hands to bring her espresso up to her lips. “Find out who he is. Where he worked, how he died. Maybe he was murdered! You can solve it and then he’ll finally be at peace.”  
  
“Yeah,” Robin hedges. “That’s how it works in the movies, right? The ghost figures out the reason they’re still here and then he’ll be, gone.”  
  
“That or it decides it wants to kill you,” Lily says and when Robin stares at her, she hastily amends, “Kidding. Totally kidding!”  
  
But that isn’t the reason why Robin’s suddenly feeling like she’d taken a punch. It’s not the reason a white wave of panic had swept over her. No, the reason was that somewhere along the way, she’d gone from wanting the ghost gone for good to--  
  
\--to something else entirely. Something she’s not sure she wants to name.  
  


***

  
  
She can’t find the obituary.   
  
She spends all day looking for it. Going through the wires, through the internet but it’s not there. Erased into the abyss.  
  
 _He was hit by a bus_ , Ted says in her head, eyes dull.  
  
Barney Stinson on the other hand. There’s a lot about Barney Stinson. There’s a blog with what seems like hundreds of entries about some of the most ridiculous things she’s ever seen. There’s party school bingo and theories about everything from the JFK assassination to the four classes of bimbo. Robin’s torn between repulsion and amusement.  
  
Another hour of searching yields barneysvideoresume.com. She watches it twice in a row without pause. The first time in shock, the second time roaring with laughter.   
  
He looks so very  _alive._  
  


***

  
  
She hates Metro News one. Hates it with the kind of passion previously reserved for her father and select members of opposing hockey teams. It’s the puns mainly. The shocking tooth about the dentist. The scoop about the ice cream man’s rolling meth lab.  
  
She’s going to kill her boss. Going to kill the writers. Going to kill someone.   
  
When she gets off work, it’s too late to hit the shooting range and if she doesn’t find a release for this, she’s going to go insane (more insane). She finds herself standing in the make-up room long after the production staff has left, clutching her reel in one hand and her resume in the other.   
  
“We should TP the place,” a voice says from behind her.  
  
Robin chokes out a sound, half laugh, half sob.  
  
“That’s right Scherbatsky. You me and a twenty-four pack of Charmin ultra soft. It’s going to be legen—wait for it—dary.”  
  
“I can’t TP my job,” Robin says, turning around.   
  
Barney’s leaning casually against the wall with a mischievous smirk on his face. It occurs vaguely to Robin that she’s never seen him outside the bar. He looks different somehow, like there’s more color in his cheeks, like his eyes got bluer. He looks less like a shadow and more like a person.  
  
Robin has been moving in the opposite direction.  
  
“Why not?” Barney protests. “It’s not like they’d pin it on you. They’d just figure someone forgot to lock up and some teenage hoodlums came in and trashed the place.”  
  
Robin laughs, but that’s just a cover for the tears threatening to well up.  
  
“You’re really upset about this aren’t you?” Barney moves toward her until she’s he’s up in her personal space. She should be able to feel his breath in the air but the air is stale. “Look if you hate your job, quit.”  
  
Robin wipes a tear angrily out of her eyes. “You say that like it’s easy.”  
  
“You mean it’s not?” Barney says. “I don’t follow.”  
  
Robin holds up her reel and her resume. “I’m a joke,” she says. “I work at Metro News One. It’s more scare tactics than news. I’m like the boogeyman with a teleprompter.”  
  
Barney smiles faintly at her joke and then hesitates for a moment like he’s not sure what he should do next. It’s an oddly human gesture, unfamiliar from a being whose very presence, whose very personality seems too fantastic to be real. Finally, he steps in closer to her and throws a comforting arm over her shoulder. Robin shivers. “You’re more then that,” he says. “You’re Robin Scherbatsky, the only person on this whole planet awesome enough to see me. Don’t give me this ‘I’m not good enough for it crap.’”  
  
Robin closes her eyes and imagines she can feel the weight of his arm on her shoulder. Imagines she can feel the warmth of his skin radiating through his suit. Imagines she can feel his breath in her hair, feel his hand comfortingly stroke her arm. But she’s so very cold.  
  
When she opens her eyes, he’s gone.  
  


***

  
  
She’s too exhausted to hit the bar that night. She goes home early, opening the door to an empty apartment. She misses her dogs. She’d sent the to her aunt’s farm last year after the third time her super had read her the litany of complaints and cited six different building code violations. The apartment seems empty without them.  
  
Something’s different about tonight though, some subtle wrongness in the apartment and she starts unconsciously moving towards her gun when she figures out what it is.  
  
It’s a picture sitting on her mantle in the place that usually houses a picture of the twelve-year-old Robin with her little sister but it’s not. Not anymore. She grabs it with shaking hands to get a closer look. There are six people sitting around a booth in a bar easily recognizable as MacLaren’s. In the photo, Ted’s arm is looped around Victoria’s waist. Lily has her head resting on Marshall’s shoulder.  
  
And then, in the bottom left corner, there is Robin Scherbatsky, arm in arm with Barney Stinson. She feels her body seize up and she might have stood there forever if the photo hadn’t slipped through numb fingers, the glass shattering on impact with the ground.  
  
“Fuck!” she curses, crouching down to pick through the shards of glass before she has the misfortune of stepping on one of them and by the time she gets to the picture again, twelve-year-old Robin is smiling out at her behind cracked glass.  
  
“What the hell,” Robin hisses and leans back against the wall, shards of glass biting at her bare palm. “What the hell?”  
  


***

  
  
“Marshall,” Victoria says a few nights later as the four of them sit in the normal booth at MacLaren’s. “Before you get mad at me, I wanted to say that I didn’t know the precise circumstances and she was my friend too. I mean she’s practically the reason me and Ted are back together.”  
  
Marshall’s brow pinches. “What exactly are you talking about?”  
  
Ted says, “Victoria invited Lily and her new boyfriend to MacLaren’s to hang out.”  
  
“And she said yes?” Robin blurts.  
  
At the same time, Marshall sputters, “Boyfriend?  
  
“I’m so sorry,” Victoria says. “I didn’t know the circumstances.” She pushes over a tiny box that Robin already recognizes as the take out box from Victoria’s bakery. “Here, I brought you a cupcake. I hope it helps.”  
  
Marshall grudgingly took the cupcake out of the box and took a bite, his eyes rolling back in pleasure.  
  
“How you doing buddy,” Ted asks.   
  
“Confused?” Marshall says. “Angry, a little jealous.” He swallows. “The cupcake helps.” He starts to stand up. “I should probably just go before she gets here and everything just gets really, really awkward.” He raises his hand and waves goodbye. “Have a good night everybody.”  
  
“Oh,” Robin says, sinking back against the booth. “I think it’s too late for you to get out unseen.”  
  
“What?” Marshall turns quickly to the door and he sits down with a thud, hiding his face. “Shit, she’s here, she’s here! What do I do? What do I do?” He turns away from the door and toward the table. “Mosby! Scherbatsky! This is not a rhetorical question! She’s going to win the breakup!”  
  
“Calm down,” Victoria says. “Take a deep breath. This isn’t helping.”  
  
“Back down devil women,” Marshall snaps. “I wouldn’t be in this mess if you had just kept your double date desire to yourselves.”  
  
“Whoa,” Ted says, wrapping a protective arm over his girlfriend’s shoulder. “That was out of line. Apologize!”  
  
“Hey, guys,” Lily says, standing over the table and giving a dry, nervous laugh.   
  
“Lily,” Ted says tightly.  
  
“Oh!” Lily says, “Before I forget.” She gestures vaguely backward to the man hovering by her shoulder. “Guys, this is Bennett.”  
  
Physically, Bennett is the anti-Marshall. He’s short and rail thin with almost delicate features and a pair of black wire frame glasses. He’s wearing a blue button down shirt and a pair of black slacks. He’s exactly the type of guy Robin would have pictured Lily dating if she hadn’t known about Marshall.  
  
“Ben,” Lily says as both Ted and Victoria stand to shake his hand. “This is Victoria, Ted.” Robin would have never heard the hesitation if she hadn’t been listening for it. “ Marshall.”  
  
Robin feels kind of bad for the guy. He looks fragile and if Robin knows her friend, Marshall is out to break fingers. To Bennett’s credit, he doesn’t flinch.  
  
“And,” Lily falters when she gets to Robin, unfamiliar with how familiar would be too familiar.   
  
Marshall beats her to it, taking Robin by surprised as he tugs her close to him. “This is Robin,” Marshall says, looking straight at Lily. “My girlfriend.” 


	6. Chapter 6

“Girlfriend?” Lily repeats. “Your girlfriend, Robin?”  
  
Robin turns to stare at Marshall. Her face is only inches away from him. It’s too close. Too warm. Too everything. She raises and eyebrow and what ensues is their first ever telepathic conversation.  _Marshall, what the hell are you doing?_  
  
 _Winning the breakup,_ Marshall replies.  _I’m winning the breakup.  
  
Yeah, but couldn’t you do that without me?_  
  
“So,” Lily says, “how long has this been going on?”  
  
 _Please, Robin_ , Marshall pleads.  
  
Robin sighs to herself swallows and says. “Gee, it’s weird to finally hear aloud. It’s been almost a week but it’s been coming for a lot longer than that.”  
  
Across the table Ted is staring slack-jawed at them and Robin hopes he gets it together but at the same time she hopes Lily sees him first.  
  
The table is too crowded with six people. Bennett and Lily both have to pull in chairs. Even that doesn’t help. She can tell people keep bumping knees under the table. “Robin’s a reporter for Metro News One. Isn’t that such and interesting job. She’s been working on a story about haunted bars. When’s that going to air, Robin?”  
  
“The ghost story,” she asks, momentarily taken aback. She can’t see Barney anywhere. “They scrapped that one.”  
  
“It’s all right,” Lily says. “Maybe that could make room for some stories on famous hoaxes like the Loch Ness Monster.”  
  
“Nessy is not a hoax!”  
  
“Metro News One, Robin?” Bennett cuts in, covering his date’s hand with his own. “That’s one of the cable networks, right?”  
  
“Damn straight it is,” Marshall says, running a hand through her hair. “Robin’s pretty much a celebrity.”  
  
“Marshall,” Robin says tightly. “Stop. Metro News One averages something like two viewers a night. There are more respected news shows on porn channels.”  
  
“Oh, she’s just being modest,” Marshall says. “But that’s my Robin for you.” He makes a move like he’s about give her a peck on the cheek but it happens at the same time Robin is turning to talk to him and their signals get crossed and all of a sudden, their lips are pressed together.   
  
It lingers a little longer than it should and it’s awkward and messed up and wrong but Robin can’t help but enjoy it just a little bit. It’s the kind of casual kiss between couples who have been together for years rather than the desperate passion of a one-night stands.  
  
“So,” Ted says slowly. “Victoria, you remember that story you were telling me about Germany, right? How about you tell that story. Right now?”  
  
“Right!” Victoria says. “Well the thing you never expect about the culinary institute is just how picky they can be about their—”  
  
Robin has heard this story before. It’s sweet and funny and oddly compelling for being primarily about baking. It should be enough to distract Lily from the fake couple that was Robin and Marshall, but it’s not. Lily’s gaze hasn’t moved once since they sat down and she’s not sure how much more of this she can take before she cracks. So she leans over, cups her hand to Marshall’s ear and says, “If you don’t make an excuse to leave  _right now_. I will pull my gun out of my purse and shoot you.”  
  
Marshall smirks. “We have to go.”   
  


***

  
  
Up in Marshall and Ted’s apartment, something clicks.   
  
“Oh God, they think we came up here to have sex don’t they.”  
  
Marshall smiles. “Yep.”  
  
Robin slaps him hard across the cheek.  
  


***

  
  
“You!” Lily squeals at her the next morning. “You and Marshall! You—how could you?”  
  
“How could I what?” Robin asks.   
  
“Date him! How could you date him and why didn’t you tell me?”  
  
“You’ve been broken up for years,” Robin says, keeping her voice low and comforting. “You can’t expect Marshall to have just been waiting that whole time. I’m sure he’s seen other people.”  
  
“But did they have to be you?” Lily shouts. “I mean you’re gorgeous and successful and exotically Canadian!”  
  
They’re in the lobby of their building and they’re causing a scene. Robin’s next-door neighbor is collecting yesterday’s mail and today’s paper and trying not to openly stare.  
  
“What about you?” Robin retorts. “Flaunting tiny little Bennett around the bar.”  
  
“Bennett’s just a friend,” Lily says, waving a hand. “He’s a substitute teacher at my school. I asked him to help me out for the night and because he’s such a sweetheart he said yes.”  
  
“He was cute,” Robin says. “Maybe you should—”  
  
“He’s gay,” Lily says miserably. “Tell Marshall and I might have to kill you.”  
  
“Ouch.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Coffee?” Robin offers. “My treat.”  
  
“Thanks.”  
  


***

  
  
She doesn’t quit her job that day but she’s getting closer by the minute. After the broadcast, she finds that Marshall’s waiting outside her office, bouncing nervously on his toes. He’s wearing dress slacks and a nice button down shirt and Robin guesses he came over straight from work.  
  
“Marshall, hey,” she greets, unable to keep all the bitterness from her voice. “You know you made things really awkward for me last night. Lily lives in my building and I’d really rather not have a neighbor that wants to kill me.”  
  
“That’s actually why I came here tonight.” He takes a deep breath. “Robin, I’m sorry. I never should have sprung something like that on you. It was inconsiderate and petty.”  
  
“Damn right it was,” Robin says. “But I get where you were coming from. Next time just give me a heads up first, all right, buddy.” She turns away, planning to head back to her apartment to wash Metro News One off of her before she hits the bar.  
  
“Let me make it up to you,” Marshall says.   
  
Robin freezes, turns back around.   
  
“Dinner,” Marshall says. “Just the two of us. I’m buying.”  
  
“Marshall Eriksen,” Robin says slowly. “That sounded an awful lot like you just asked me out.”  
  
“So what if it did,” Marshall takes a step toward her. “Look Robin, you’re one of my best friend and everyone knows that’s the best kind of person to go out with. Plus with Victoria and Ted and Lily moving on, I figure its time for me to move on too. And I like you Robin. So, go to dinner with me.”  
  
In another world, this is the ideal situation. If she was looking to settle down, Robin likes to think it would be with someone like Marshall. Someone who is sweet and funny and loyal to a fault. She could see this story more clearly then she could see Mr. and Mrs. Ted Mosby.  
  
But not this way.   
  
This isn’t their story. It never has been.  
  
“I can’t Marshall,” she says. “I really want to but I can’t. You might think you’re being big and romantic but you’re just worried because your best friend’s got a serious girlfriend and your ex is moving on and I’m the only one left.”  
  
“Oh God, Robin. I’m sorry,” he sweeps a big hand over her shoulder and there’s nothing sexual about it and they’re just two friends hugging on a crowded street corner. “I didn’t mean for it to sound like that. It’s just, it’s been a hard couple years. I mean there was me and Lily and then Barney and then Ted and Stella and well, Robin you’re about the only good thing that’s happened to this group in the past few years.”  
  
Robin presses her eyes shut and thinks of Ted and Victoria, thinks of Barney in his suit smirking and laughing and thinks of Lily from that morning, panicked in the coffee shop. She thinks of how nice it would be to end up with a good guy, a sweet guy after the parade of jackasses she’d courted since she moved from Canada. The  _right guy._  
  
Only he isn’t the right guy. Not for her.  
  
She stands on her tiptoes, kisses his cheek and whispers, “Lily’s date was a gay substitute teacher from her school.”  
  
Marshall leans away from her a smile crossing his features. “Excuse me, Robin,” he says. “I have to go.”  
  


***

  
  
She’s the first one to MacLaren’s that night but that’s all right because Barney’s there, grinning as she comes in and sits across from him in their usual booth. “Well played last night, Scherbatsky,” he says. “You appear to have the makings of a criminal mastermind. I love it.”  
  
“Thank you,” Robin says, raising her glass as if in toast. “Thank you very much.”  
  
“We totally need to celebrate,” Barney says, positively bouncing in his seat. “This is the eve of the epic long awaited Lily and Marshall reunion. We should go play laser tag or maybe hit the cigar bar or.” He goes weirdly quiet and stares at his hands. “Or maybe you can just stay here and drink and I’ll watch.”  
  
He looks completely and utterly miserable for the first time since she’s known him and it breaks a little part of her. She wonders how long it’s been since the accident. If he’d felt the life smashed out of his body. If he remembers how much it hurt. “No,” she says firmly. “No, I think we’re going to hit laser tag. I’ve got a secret weapon now.”  
  
“Yes, Scherbatsky!” Barney says, pumping his fist in the year. “The two of us together and those pimply faced little monsters won’t stand a chance. The world will crumble beneath the awesome of the Scherbatsky-Stinson team!”  
  
Robin grabs her purse, thankful she’d only had on drink so far tonight and starts making her way towards the door when she notices that Ted’s been sitting at the end of the bar. “Mosby!” she crows. “This is a night of celebration! We’re going to play laser tag.”  
  
Barney’s bouncing next to her shoulder and she can feel his excitement just as much as she can feel her own. Ted is looking at her with at same calculating stare he gets when he’s tied up in some architectural design project. She feels the excitement slowly leeching out of her body. “Robin,” Ted says seriously. “Who were you talking to?”  
  
Robin looks back to the booth, trying not to let her eyes snag on Barney along the way. She’s been getting careless, but it’s hard to keep on edge when Barney Stinson’s presence has become so utterly normal. “No one,” she lies.  
  
“I didn’t notice it before because, well, you’ve been like this since I met you. I mean you have these weird zone outs and you talk to yourself when you think no one’s around but then Victoria pointed it out to me and I started watching myself.”  
  
Something in Robin’s stomach clenches.  _That’s it_ , she thinks,  _that’s everything it’s over. It’s over_. She doesn’t look at Barney but she can feel him tensing up too. This thing they’ve shared, it’s going to end soon.  
  
“Robin,” Ted says seriously. “Is there something wrong? I’m sorry if I didn’t see it before but we’re friends. If there’s something wrong, you can tell me. I can help.”  
  
“Nothing’s wrong,” Robin whispers.   
  
“I’m not going to let this go,” Ted says. 


	7. Chapter 7

For the next week, Ted is always watching. Robin can feel it from the moment she steps into the bar to the moment she leaves. Barney is there. Barney is always there. Barney is cracking jokes and laughing and talking to her just like he’s part of the group. Just like everyone else can see him too. And she never realized just how much she reacts to him until Ted started watching. The smile leaves her face when she meets Ted’s eyes and she feels impossibly guilty even though she shouldn’t.  
  
Ted her if something’s wrong at least once a day. And after a while she caves in and starts talking to him. She tells him about how much she hates her job and her epic failures in terms of dating, she even broaches her father issues for the first time in almost ten years. (“Father issues,” Barney acknowledges. “Hot.”). She tells him more than she’s ever told another living person. But she doesn’t tell him about the ghost. (“Our little secret,” Barney says with a wink. “Ted’s just not awesome enough for this club”)  
  
She’s starting to talk like Barney, things like legendary and awesome littering her conversations like a minefield. Part of it’s conscious: a burning desire for Ted to make the conclusions on his own. Because if Ted figures it out without her telling him, that means this isn’t crazy.  
  
Ghosts aren’t real.   
  
That is something they both believe but circumstances seem to dictate otherwise.  
  
Things are changing. Robin can feel it in her bones. Barney talks her into applying for four other jobs. Lily shows up at MacLaren’s three out of four nights that week and even though they’re not together, it’s the most Robin has seen Marshall smile since she met him.  
  
She drags Ted and Victoria to laser tag one night. Barney helps her spring traps on the unsuspecting couple while Ted shrieks like a little girl and Victoria laughs and laughs and laughs.  
  
She slips into the sixth spot on the all time high scorer’s list and her name breaks a pattern. One Scherbatsky in the midst of ninety-nine Stinsons. “It’s all right,” Barney says as they buy celebratory soft pretzels. “We’re a team.”  
  
“That,” Robin tells Ted later, “was legendary.”  
  
“Right on!” Barney says, beaming from beside her.  
  
“Robin,” Ted asks. “Is there something wrong?”  
  
“No,” Robin says and it’s the truth this time. She can scarcely remember the last time she was this happy. “No, nothing at all.”  
  


***

  
  
On the day everything changes, it’s drizzling--the slow, steady, miserable rain that makes her was to curl up on her bed and just sleep. But she has plans for the night. It’s Saturday which means MacLaren’s and then possibly karaoke at a club a few streets over. When she walks into the bar she finds herself automatically scanning the sea of vaguely familiar faces for Marshall or Ted or Barney but none of them are here.  
  
She does a double take and spots Victoria sitting in their usual booth waving for her to come over. “Hey,” she says. “Did I miss a memo about a girls night?”  
  
“Going to start like that at least,” Victoria confirms. “Marshall and Ted are going to be late,” She smiles mischievously. “Marshall’s in an as of yet undisclosed location.”  
  
“Oh,” Robin perks up at that. “I’m liking the sound of this.” She settles into the booth and sets her purse on the table. “We’re assuming he’s banging Lily, right?”  
  
Victoria’s mouth drops open. Barney would be so proud of her. “Yes,” Victoria sputters, trying to hide her laughter. “Yes, we’re assuming he’s banging Lily. Ted is not aware of theory this as of now.”  
  
“Good for them,” Robin says, smiling. “What’s Ted up to? Massive architecture snore?”  
  
“No,” Victoria says, shifting in her seat. “He’s actually at the hospital.”  
  
“Oh my God, is he all right?”  
  
“He’s fine. He’s just visiting someone,” Victoria says and then does a double take. “Oh! You haven’t heard this yet. I guess that must have been before you met the guys. It happened when I was in Germany. See, Ted and Marshall had this friend, Barney. He was kind of a--” She hesitated. “Kind of a character. From what I hear it happened the same day Ted was in that car accident. Apparently Barney made a trip cross town to see him and wham. Hit by a bus. Can you believe that? Anyway it really made Ted stop and think. And—”  
  
The sound cuts out. Robin is intensely aware of her own heartbeat throbbing in his chest and for a moment she can hear the echo of Barney’s voice saying,  _Dead? You think I’m dead?_  
  
“Robin?” Victoria says, but her voice is faded, static. “Robin, is there something wrong?”  
  
“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” Robin says.  
  
“Maybe it’s because there’s really clearly something wrong.” Victoria’s voice is gentle like she thinks Robin might break.  
  
But Robin isn’t going to break. Not after all this.  
  
“I need to go.”  
  


***

  
  
Robin hates hospitals. They remind her somehow of malls. It’s something in the crowds that pack the waiting room and the overpriced coffee and the constant sense that everybody is looking for something. The receptionist is a pretty, dark skinned lady with a brittle, bone tired demeanor. “Hello,” Robin says, setting her purse on the desk. “I’m here to visit Barney Stinson.”  
  
Every sound is magnified. Someone is crying in the lobby. There is a squeaking wheelchair moving through the hall. The clack-clack of the receptionist’s fingers on the keyboard sounds like a drumbeat.  
  
“Room 414,” she says finally. “Follow the signs.”  
  
Robin moves toward the elevator and presses the call button. The elevator that finally comes down isn’t empty. Barney Stinson is inside looking uncharacteristically solemn. Robin hesitates for the barest fraction of a second before stepping inside and hitting the button for the floor.   
  
“You don’t want to do this,” Barney says.   
  
“Like hell I don’t,” Robin says. “All this time, I thought you were dead.”  
  
“I might as well be,” he says miserably.  
  
“But you’re not,” Robin protests. “You’re not and that’s a good thing.”  
  
“Let me break it down for you,” Barney says. He jabs his finger almost angrily at the elevator doors. “The person who you’re going to find out there, that’s not me. That person is suffering from a complete lack of all things awesome. He has hospital suited up. He spends all day in bed. Exhibit B.” He gestures to himself. The tailored suit, the sharp features. “Come on, it’s not even a contest.”  
  
“You’re the same person,” Robin says. She watches the screen flash floor two, floor three. She doesn’t like elevators. They remind her of coffins. “Why are we even having this conversation?”  
  
The elevator dings and the doors yawn open. It is the ward for long-term care and it is a good deal less busy than the rest of the hospital. This is the space of the dying. The coma patients. Those with terminal caner. There are bright white lights everywhere. The doctors are wearing white. The nurses, an array of colorful scrubs. The splashes of color look wrong in a place like this. The light seems fake. Underneath the crisp smell of antiseptic, Robin can smell the cloying sickness hanging in the air.   
  
“Maybe we’re having this conversation because I don’t want things to change,” Barney says. His voices is like broken glass and she finds herself freezing so she doesn’t get cut. “You haven’t seen that me. Not the one in there. But Ted, Marshall, Lily, all of them have and that’s all they see. But you, you can actually see me and I can’t help thinking that if you go in there maybe you won’t anymore.”  
  
She turns to look at him. His hair is mussed, his tip his loosed, flailing limply against his chest. The top button of his shirt is undone. He looks human. He looks tired.  
  
But he looks alive and alive is better than dead. Alive is better than ghost.   
  
“Please, Robin,” he says. “Just turn around. You don’t need to see this.”  
  
It would be so easy to listen to him. So easy to head back to MacLaren’s to drink with Victoria and pretend she had no idea Ted had visited the hospital. She could keep deflecting Ted’s probing questions about what was wrong with her.   
  
Then she thinks about her job at Metro News One. How every day is torture but she’d stayed for years. She thinks of Ted moving on after Stella. She thinks of Marshall letting go of his anger and how much more he smiles now that he’s talking to Lily again. It’s a risk but...  
  
“Change isn’t always a bad thing, Barney,” she mumbles.   
  
“Eighty-three percent of the people in my position never wake up,” Barney says. “And the ones who do have more problems than I want to count. What did you think is going to happen?”  
  
Robin squeezes her eyes shut and thinks about miracles.   
  
“I’m sorry, miss?” There’s suddenly a hand on her shoulder and solid real physical contact freaks her out so badly, she nearly knocks the perpetrator over.   
  
It takes a second before her heartbeat returns to normal. Before she stammers out an apology and her cheeks turn red.  
  
“It was my fault,” the nurse says. “You looked a little lost.”  
  
“I’m looking for Barney Stinson’s room,” she says, the words thick on her tongue.  
  
“Mr. Stinson, huh?” the nurse says. “You’re not one of his regulars.”  
  
“No, I’m not. I’m an old friend. I only just heard about the accident.”  
  
“A shame that one is.” She sounds like she’s moving on autopilot, like she’s heard a thousand tragedies and will hear a thousand more. “He had a lot of friends.” She pats Robin gently on the arm. “Room 414, Miss. It’s down the hall on the right.”  
  
His name is on the door. Barney Stinson. Room 414. She looks over her shoulder, half expecting to see the ghost behind her but she’s alone except for the nurse moving between patient rooms and a doctor in a swirling white lab coat making notes on a chart.  
  
Robin tells herself she’s being stupid and pushes the door open.  
  
The room isn’t much. It’s small and gray with a tangle of medical instruments all linked to a frail looking figure in bed. At his side is Ted Mosby, face buried in his hand.   
  
The door behind her swings shut and the sound startles Ted into awareness. He looks at her with only the vaguest expression of surprise.  
  
“Robin,” Ted says. His eyes are tinged red. “Hey. I didn’t expect to see you here.”  
  
Robin doesn’t say anything. She just stares at the hospital bed. Listens to the slow rhythm of the heart monitor.   
  
Ted stands up, brushing at the corners of his eyes with the sleeve of his oversized shirt. He forces a laugh but it comes out distorted through tears. “Have you met Barney?” 


	8. Chapter 8

Robin doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t know if there’s anything she can say. She didn’t know Barney Stinson. She wasn’t there.  
  
“Sorry,” Ted says. “That was bad taste. It’s just, well, this is my friend, Barney. He’s usually a lot more alive than this. Or at least, he used to be. I’m starting to think he might not still be around.”  
  
But Barney is around. Barney is sitting on the foot of his own bed, swinging his legs and looking completely and utterly miserable. “I’m so sorry,” Robin says. “I didn’t know. The way you talked about him—I just assumed he was dead.”  
  
“It would almost be easier if he was dead,” Ted says. “I mean I love the guy, but it’s been more than a year. I keep thinking it would have been easier for all of us to move on if he hadn’t made it.”  
  
“I’m too awesome to die,” Barney mumbles and Robin suddenly realizes that isn’t the problem at all. The problem is he doesn’t know how. She wonders how hard it had been for him before she’d come along.  
  
It’s no wonder he’d looked like a ghost when’s she’d first met her. He looks so much better now. So much more human.  
  
The one in the bed looks worse than the ghost. His skin is a sallow, sickly color. There are dozens of different machines latched onto him but at least he’s breathing on his own. The Barney sitting at the foot of the bed thought, that was Barney. The real Barney. Suited up and brimming with life.   
  
“You know I think the last thing I said to him was ‘you’re an immature jackass.’ I don’t even remember what I was fighting with him about. It was something stupid about Stella. Guess I probably should have listened to him right?”  
  
“Ted,” Robin says finally. “Do you really think he’d hold that against you?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Ted says, shrugging. “I mean I made it out of a crash with barely a scratch. Marshall kept telling me it was a miracle and then Barney, Barney gets hit by a bus. There’s no such thing as miracles.”  
  
Robin isn’t good with the physical, she doesn’t know what to do when someone’s upset but she moves toward Ted and loops and arm over his shoulder in an awkward half hug.  
  
“He would have liked you,” Ted says. “I mean if he didn’t ruin it by banging you the first time he met you, he would have really, really liked you.”  
  
They sit like that for a long time.  
  


***

  
  
It goes on exactly the way it had before. With Barney tagging along at Robin’s side, cracking lewd jokes every time a guy hits on her. She talks to him when she’s alone, smiles at him when the others are around.   
  
She and Ted start hanging out, just the two of them, grabbing bagels some mornings and coffee some afternoons. He tells her about Barney, about Stella, about ex girlfriends and how he’s starting to think Victoria might be the one.  
  
Marshall and Lily start sitting closer and closer in the booth. They start stealing food of each other’s plates. They bolt out of the booth whenever the word asparagus is used. They’re clearly back together. Not to mention screwing at frequent intervals but neither of them say a word. Robin suspects it’s because of Ted. She loves the guy like a brother but he can hold a grudge second to no one.   
  
Then one night when Marshall’s working late on some huge environmental case and Victoria nudges Ted in the side. “Lily,” she says. “Ted has something he would like you to tell you.” She looks pointedly at Ted. “Sweetie?”  
  
“If you hurt Marshall again I will make you pay,” Ted says.  
  
Victoria elbows him hard in the ribs. “But this is the happiest I’ve seen him in years,” Ted continues. “And Lily, it’s really good to see you back together.”  
  
Victoria smiles and rubs his back. “Was that so hard?”  
  
“About time, bro,” Barney says. “They’ve only been doing it again for a month.”  
  


***

  
  
She goes to the hospital when she has the time, walks the increasingly familiar route to Barney’s room to sit by his side for an hour or so. Sometimes the phantom Barney follows her inside. Sometimes he doesn’t. When he is there, they compare notes on the rest of the gang, he recounts old sexcapades and wild theories about Jesus and the three days rule.   
  
She runs into Lily one time, standing forlornly at the foot of his bed and telling the sleeping man, “Things aren’t the same without you.”  
  
Marshall walks in on her once and asks if she even knew Barney.   
  
“He’s one of the gang,” Robin tells him. “Even if he’s not around anymore.”  
  
She makes sure she only comes with he’s at work after that.  
  
Some days she visits with Ted at her side and it’s not weird. Not after she’d seen his breakdown. This is moral support. This is something friends do. On the second visit, she asks why Barney’s family never comes around. “His brother lives cross country,” Ted says. “His mom had been sick on an off for years. Cancer. It came out of remission a few months after Barney’s accident. She didn’t last long. Me, Marshall and Lily, we’re all the family he’s got around.”  
  


***

  
  
“Hey,” Lily asks one day when they’re going out for coffee. “What happened to that ghost you were seeing?”  
  
Robin breathes in and out, plasters a smile on her face. “Turns out it wasn’t a ghost after all.”  
  


***

  
  
Winter bleeds into spring and Robin quits her job at Metro News One, feeling like a weight has been lifted off her shoulders. She’s been offered a job hosting an early, early morning show. The hours are ungodly but it’s not Metro News One and that makes it damn near perfect.  
  
They go out to brunch to celebrate after her first day, Robin coming off an incredibly late night, the rest of them working on morning time. Their table is set for five but there are six chairs and Barney sits at the empty place sitting beaming at her. “I’m so proud of you,” he says. “I told you! There was no way you wouldn’t bag that job. You’re going to be the best ridiculously early morning show host in the history of television.”  
  
Ted raises a glass of milk in toast. “To Robin Scherbatsky and new beginnings,” he says. “May your new job be free of bad puns.”  
  
They click glasses and down their drinks. Marshall winds up with a huge milk moustache and starts doing Groucho Marx impersonations until Lily grabs him by the shirt sleeves and kisses it off. Victoria, Ted crack jokes about PDAs and Barney cough-says, “Asparagus.”  
  
The waiter comes back with plates full of pancakes and maple syrup to the cheers of the group. And everything’s good and fine and just about perfect until Barney starts to flicker.  
  
Robin finds herself frozen, her fork halfway to her mouth, maple syrup dripping onto the plate  
  
“Something’s happening,” Barney says. His face has gone pale. He seems to be on the verge of panic. “Robin, something’s happening!” He swallows. “You know you’re awesome, right? Totally the most awesome person I know.”  
  
She wishes she could do something to comfort him, wishes she could say something to him like he’d said to her when she’d been upset about her job. She starts to make an excuse to leave but Ted’s phone rings and Barney’s suddenly no where to be found.  
  
“Yes, this is him,” says Ted he listens for a minute and says, “Wait could you repeat that last part. You know what, wait, I’m coming over.” He hangs up. “It’s Barney.”  
  


***

  
  
They take two cabs to the hospital. Marshall and Lily in the first. Ted and Victoria in the second. There’s an awkward half second where Robin stands immobile, not sure of where to go. Her friends have paired off and who did that leave her with? Besides, as far as they knew, she and Barney had never met. Then Ted pushes the door to his cab open and says, “Come on, Robin, what are you waiting for?”  
  
She slides into the cramped back seat of the cab, bumping knees with Ted. Her entire body is on edge. She turns to Ted and sees tension laced through his every feature. His arm is on Victoria’s shoulder.  
  
“So,” she says carefully. “What happened to Barney?”  
  
“Well,” Ted says, “over the past few months they’ve been trying out these new experimental procedures. It’s called deep brain stimulation. Basically it uses electric impulses to encourage activity in various parts of the brain. Barney’s been showing some encouraging results, responding to stimuli.”  
  
“Ted,” Robin says, more harshly then she intends. “Cliff notes, please. What does it mean?”  
  
Ted swallows. “It means he might be waking up.”  
  
“That’s huge,” Victoria says. “I wonder if he’ll be all right.”  
  
“You’re not allowed to propose, Ted,” Robin says.  
  
“What?” Ted sputters.  
  
“What?” Victoria echoes.  
  
“He does that after big life changing events in hospitals,” Robin says. She’s babbling now, hiding her nervousness by saying anything that pops into her head. “Victoria if he tries, say no.”  
  
Victoria starts laughing. Ted turns red. “A hospital? Seriously who in their right mind would propose in a hospital. If I was going to do it I would do it right.”  
  
“Yeah,” Victoria challenges. “I heard last time it was Kiddie Fun Land. That’s going to be a hard act to top.”  
  
“I’d do it right,” Ted insists. “There’d be flowers. Champaign. It would be perfect.”  
  
 _Those two_ , Robin thinks,  _those two are going to last._  
  
She looks down at her knee bouncing anxiously, her fingers drumming on the window pain. Robin, she’s a bit less stable.  
  


***

  
  
The hospital room is too small for five of them and there’s only one chair so with the couples standing next to one another, offering each other some small measure of comfort, it seems only natural for Robin to take the seat at Barney’s bedside. She stares at the pale skin, the atrophied muscles and tries to picture instead the Barney she knows.   
  
“Doctor says it’s a waiting game now.” Ted says. “But for the first time in a long time, signs are looking good.”  
  
Robin isn’t really listening to the clamor behind her. Instead she’s looking at Barney’s hand. At the limp fingers and white skin. Behind her, the two couples are wrapped around each other, supporting each other.  
  
Impulsively, she reaches for Barney’s hand.  
  
After months on end of phantom touches and chills, the warmth of it takes her by surprise. She feels awkward holding the limp hand, like a kid at a slumber party about to play a prank.  
  
“I can see his eyes moving,” Marshall says excitedly. “You know like what happens when you’re dreaming! That’s a good sign, right guys? That hasn’t been happening before.”  
  
In her hand there’s a sudden shift, not strong but a few fingers shifting against her palm.   
  
Robin sits back, smiles and waits for a miracle.


End file.
